This was created to help block out the approach towards completing this project.
For collecting art assets, a solution we have come up with is taking public domain stock photographs and filtering it to make it look different and in style. For this specific example a stock image of a castle was put through the “Cut-Out” filter of Photoshop, and modified slightly to change color balance. It gives the art a more hand drawn appearance.
For the characters we will be using a more “sprite” approach. The character graphics will be simple, almost silhouette in appearance.
This will allow us to quickly create animations and character art, without worrying about details. For the example posted, it is just a modified sprite from the game King’s Quest II, but it shows the style off (the bird sprite was drawn by Ned).
For the UI, the game focuses almost entirely on Dialog, so text boxes will be used to ensure readability. A portrait may be used to show the character speaking, although this adds more art assets that we need to find. The image in the example is a drawing of Arthur (filtered slightly), but it is not public domain, so it cannot be used.
The arrows are there to show the player which ways he/she can go without needed to provide any further visual cues (considering art is somewhat restricted on what we can use).
